Chapter 1
The world was dying.
That was the simple, harsh truth of the matter. The Last War of the Wizards had earned its title, the spells, and eventually muggle weapons used being more and more horrendous as time went by. What started with disarming spells and killing curses had ended in withering curses applied to whole nations, and nukes falling like rain.
In the end, there was no victor, no heroes, no villains. Neither Halie Potter, nor Tom Riddle fell, even amidst the horrors that consumed the earth. Not even when the Ley Lines snapped, tectonic plates began to shatter, and the skies filled with radioactive sulfur.
Now? The war had finally ended, in a damn ceasefire of all things. Thoughts of vengeance, and glory had long disappeared, only the thought of survival remained. That one clear drive, the will to endure, was what led the tattered remnants of two armies to stand side by side before their one, final hope.
Halie Potter, The-Girl-Who-Lived, The-Chosen-One, Worldbreaker, Soulthief, Mistress-Of-Death, Stood side by side with Tom Riddle Jr., Voldemort, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, The Destroyer, Armageddon, The-Undying-Scourge, and stared down at their last chance.
Somehow, during the bombing of London, the Death Chamber had survived intact, its otherworldly gateway standing tall and unbroken amidst the piles of rubble, and the ashen shadows that used to be living, breathing beings. The gateway, that if all went well, would spirit them away from this dying wreckage of a world, and allow them to walk the infinite void between worlds to find a new home.
Halie looked to the shattered remnants of her army. The few that had survived long enough that she had been able to then ensure their continued survival. That was one of the reasons the war had been so long and so cruel. When neither side can die, the only casualties were everyone else. Luna Lovegood, her seer, who had been so crucial in the war, Nymphadora Tonks, Blaise Zabini, Charlie Weasley, Gabriella Delacour, and of course Draconia Malfoy, Halie's second in command for most of the war.
Of the hundreds of others that had once fought at her side, only these were left. Only these few.
"Tom, is the gate ready?" Her voice was high and cold. Much like Tom's.
The man had reclaimed his true form at some point during the war, and now stood, dark-haired and handsome, his pale skin in sharp contrast to the ash filled air. "Yes. It is ready. I don't know how long it will hold though, the Ley Lines I repaired to get it active are already tearing themselves apart."
"Very well." Hailie sighed. Then turned to the collective soldiers of the light, and the dark. "Alright people! Gate is open! Move! Move! Move!" There were shouts of confirmation, and most of the group ran though.
When each soul reached the ripping curtain that hung suspended in an imaginary breeze, they vanished with a pule of starlight. One by one, the last witches and wizards of Earth left.
"After you Potter." Tom said. His voice betraying no emotion.
"Sure thing Riddle." Halie paused just before the gate. "If you end up on the same world as me, lets not wreck that one too."
He gave a small sad smile. "I think I've seen enough death for a few lifetimes. Perhaps i'll be ready for war again in a few eons."
"Goodbye Tom." Halie said quietly, stepping away from the man, the monster that had defined her, and shaped her whole life from the time she was a babe. As she was flung away from the dying world, a quiet sense of relief spread over her. It was finally over.
….
Inter-dimensional travel it turned out, was not pleasant. Halie screamed a silent cry of agony as she was flung through the blind eternities of the multiverse. The darkness of the spaces between was so beyond that of any mortal dark, that it made the memory of shadow seem as bright as the sun.
Something unknowable, and unfeeling tore at her, flaying flesh from muscle, and muscle from bone, before reversing the process.
Halie sobbed, crying tears that never came, and wished for a death she had forever put beyond her reach.
Just as Tom had made her his Horcrux, he was one of hers. Another rested on a space probe many millions of millions of miles away from earth. Floating in the quiet darkness of space, far from the war torn world.
She had ensured that she would never die, and now she wished she hadn't.
Time seemed to bend back on itself. Sometimes it seemed as if she had been falling for seconds, sometimes it felt as if she had been stuck in this hell, being torn to pieces and resembled like a child's puzzle, for all eternity.
Then it ended. The darkness lightened to black, and she slipped into blessed unconsciousness.
…..
She woke to the incredibly unpleasant feeling of something being rammed through her stomach.
Returning to the waking world, Halie took a quick acessment of her situation. She appeared to have landed in some unknown forest, and currently was impaled on an annoying fallen branch. She pulled the piece of wood out of her midsection with a hiss of displeasure and rose unsteadily to her feet, as the wound closed on its own, and her black silk robe knitted itself back together over it.
She quickly checked over her most precious belongings. The three hallows that held the majority of her soul secreted away within them were safe and sound. The ring, cloak, and wand as utterly indestructible as ever. Her mokeskin pouch, enchanted to hold her life's belongings weightlessly, one of Halie's last ties to the memory of Hermione Granger, sat undisturbed on its chain around her neck.
The gleaming goblin steel naganita, or sword on a stick, as Halie fondly liked to refer to it, that had served her well in the later years of the war, quivered in the trunk of a nearby tree imbedded to the blade end.
A quick flick of her fingers, and the weapon soared into her waiting grasp.
Time to find out just where exactly 'here' was.
….
Professor Ozpin looked at the screen before him incredulously. Devices in the forest near the school had picked up an incredible burst of magic. Not aura, not dust, magic. True, honest to the ancestors magic.
Panic rose quickly inside the powerful hunter. Could it be the the mysterious Maiden killer? Back to finish the job. Opine checked the coordinates on the screen, grabbed his cane and his scroll and ran. He needed to contact Qrow, and Glynda. If the Maiden killer was here, she wouldn't make it out alive.
…
Halie stared up at the birds above her with joy. It had been so long since she had seen any living things other than humans and insects.
The crunch of twigs and leaves under foot brought back fond memories of the forbidden forest, long since turned to radioactive ash.
Then a low growl echoed behind her. She froze and turned slowly to face what appeared to be a demonic werewolf.
She swore loudly. A side effect of splitting your soul was that it killed any animagus form one might have had, leaving her without the easiest and least bloody way to deal with weres.
She raised a single finger and intoned the cruel words to the killing curse. The bolt of sickly green light flew across the clearing in which she stood and impacted the beast square in the chest. Nothing happened.
Halie began to panic. There were exactly two things that could survive a killing curse. Dementors, because they were soulless monstrosities, and herself and Tom, because they were soulless monstrosities.
That meant that this creature had no soul, and thus soul magic was entirely useless against it, However, it was corporeal, so her second favorite spell in existence would suffice.
The creature charged, its bony exoskeleton flexing and screaming in protest at the speed it was moving.
Halie intoned one single word of power. "Fiendfyre." A single mote of blood red flame flew to land gently on the fur of the creature.
An instant later there was nothing but ash. Halie let the mote return to her and gently caught it between her fingers, pulling the magic the flame had ripped out of the beast's life-force and absorbing it into herself.
…
From the cliff's edge Ozipin looked into the forest below. He stared at his scroll. The magic wielder had wandered into the range of the forest cameras. He watched as she effortlessly incinerated a beowolf. That was not maidens magic. The magic of the maidens was elemental and pure. Neutral in nature.
This…this was something else entirely. This magic had something dark, something cruel about it. It's nature was echoed in its wielder, who had smiled at the beowulf's howls of pain. She had delighted in its demise.
The girl herself was strangely out of place. She looked no older than nineteen, perhaps younger, but every inch of visible skin was covered in scars. It was if she had been taken apart, and then stitched back together a thousand times by an amateur surgeon. The scars also varied wildly. from what looked like clean slashes, and deep piercing wounds, to burns, to what could only be described as chunks of flesh being torn away from her body. A black silk dress, torn and burnt, covered her frame, and a silvery gaussian wisp of a cloak trailed behind her. Flame red hair flowed down her back, but it was the eyes that frightened Ozpin.
They were violently, shockingly, green. It was not a natural green, in fact there was a sense of un-natural, wrongness about them, but that was not what bothered him. What sent shivers down his spine was the coldness, the hate, and the sorrow they held. No one could amass that in a single lifetime, or at least no-one should. They were they eyes of someone who had truly and utterly lost their way.
Ozpin made a snap decision. It was foolish, irrational, and likely idiotic. However, he was sure in his soul it was the right one. He stepped off the cliff, and fell to the forest below, intent on finding the girl with the green eyes.
…
Twenty four more creatures had assaulted Halie. Twenty four more creatures had been turned to wisps of ash by her fire. It was oddly refreshing, destroying something she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was evil. Anything without an intact soul was an abomination. She would know.
"You are putting quite a dent in the local Grimm population. I must say I'm very impressed." A low, calm voice spoke from behind her.
She whirled instantly, years of war honing her reflexes. The words of the killing curse flew to her lips, and the elder wand flicked to her hand hungrily. She stopped at what she saw. A man, with the face of a man in their thirties, but the eyes of one far far older. A grey haired man, in a forest full of monsters, calmly sipping a cup of coffee.
It had been so long since she had last had coffee. The beverage had become a commodity shortly into the war, and it had been all gone long before the end.
It was odd to see the simple normal things. It was a reminder that she was far from home. Far from the war torn world she had left behind.
Ultimately, it was the cup of coffee that saved the man's life. The spell died on her lips, and the wand returned to its holster. "Grimm? That's what those things are called?"
The man frowned. "You didn't know?"
She threw back her head and laughed. "No. No I didn't. Im…Not from around here." She chuckled. Not from around here, that was the understatement of the century.
"Where do you come from then? I haven't head of anywhere on Remnant where the Grimm do not reside. Such a place must be a practical utopia."
A bitter snort rose unbidden. "Hardly. Where I come from isn't on Remnant. It's far far from here." She was quiet for a second. "Actually by now, depending on how long it actually took to get here it probably no longer exists."
"Not on Remnant?" The man's brown eyes narrowed. "What exactly do you mean?"
"Im assuming since you didn't saw me killing those…grimm…and didn't panic, Magic is a very real thing in this world as well?" Halie asked.
"Yes." The man was expressionless. He took a small sip of coffee. "So you come from another world, one that now may not exist. I am assuming you fled." She nodded. "You managed to jump between worlds, and have tremendously powerful magics. What exactly are you? And why did you have to leave your world?"
"There was a war." Halie fell into her occulemncy exercises. She didn't know why she was about to tell her life story to a complete stranger. Maybe it was just that she was tired of secrets. "There was a horrible, awful war. A Dark Lord, a monster greater than any before was intent on destroying everything dear to me and mine, and conquering the rest of the world. He was an abomination, and so I fought him. In the process, bit by bit, piece by piece, everything I was fighting for was ruined, destroyed, consumed. Then I fought for revenge I fought the monster for so long I became one. The world suffered, and then it died." Even through the emotionless mask she was holding, tears threatened to flow. "I ran. I and the few survivors of both sides made our peace and ran."
"What do you want now?" The man's voice was soothing, with an undercurrent of shared pain.
Halie thought for a long quiet moment. Her first thought would be peace, but that was a lie. She was a soldier, born for battle, and forged in war. She would be lost in peace. She then thought of family, and friends. That was also a lie. She didn't want anyone to get close, she didn't deserve that. Then she thought of her shattered soul, it's pieces scattered across the cosmos, and the only way to heal it. "Repentance. I have made so, so, so many mistakes. I just want to do some actual good. I want to repay my debt."
The man smiled sadly. "I know the feeling." he whispered. Halie would have scoffed, if it were not for the true, heartrending look of pain his eyes held. "I might have a way to help you."
"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow.
"You landed near a school. A school called beacon, of which I am the headmaster. A school that trains Hunters and Huntresses to fight the creatures of Grimm, to hold back the darkness so that the light of humanity may shine bright." His voice rose in pitch slightly towards the end of his speech.
She laughed. Of course it would be a school. Of course she would meet the grey haired headmaster with sorrow in his eyes.
It brought up painful memories of her mentor, her grandfather figure, and his broken body beneath the tallest tower.
Perhaps this time could be different though. Perhaps she could actually do some good here.
"Are you asking me to join your school?"
"I do belive I am." He replied.
"Yes." She said instantly. "I'll do it. Thank you….for…giving me a second chance."
He smiled. That well hidden sorrow still present in his eyes. "I myself am well acquainted with second chances." He paused. "I do believe we skipped over introductions. I am Professor Ozpin, you can call me Oz if you like."
"I'm Halie-" She almost finished with 'Potter.' However, that name had caused her so much pain, from the day she was born. It was time to start anew. "Uhh…just Halie."
"Alright Halie." Opine smiled and offered her a hand. She clasped it tightly, like it was a lifeline. "Welcome to Beacon Academy."
A/N: Okay, confession time. I totally, completely and utterly stole the idea of a RWBY/ HP crossover from the wonderful DragonKingDragneel25, And his wonderful story 'RWBY, JNPR, & HAIL.
Then I came to the realization that there were multiple stories in the crossover, and that was amazing. However I couldn't find a single fem!harry RWBY/ HP fic. Sooooo I had to fix that.
Anyway. One thing led to another, and then this was born.
please read and review.
-AZ